Latest / The Songhai Empire: Africa's Powerful Forgotten Kingdom — Fexingo History
Songhai's Female Scholars: The Women of Timbuktu's Libraries
When we picture Timbuktu's golden age, we often imagine male scholars like Ahmed Baba. But the Tarikh al-Sudan and Tarikh al-Fattash reveal a hidden history: women who built libraries, taught at Sankore, and shaped intellectual life in the Songhai Empire. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the lives of figures like Aisha al-Fulaniya, a scholar and teacher who amassed a personal library of over 700 manuscripts, and Nana Asma'u, though she belongs to a later Sokoto context, we focus on the women of 15th-16th century Timbuktu. We discuss how elite women endowed libraries, how the…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.